It should be said up front that Tony Hiss’s family has long been familiar with the Eastern Shore well before he was born. With his famous and controversial father, Alger, and mother, Priscilla, frequently staying in Kent County to visit friends and their older son at camp in Quaker Neck, or, with his uncle, Don, a partner at Covington and Burling, having a second home in Talbot County, the roots to this area and its landscape are deeply felt. But his desire to ecologically and culturally protect the Shore is much more tied to his professional life as a writer, first with the New Yorker and now as an independent author.
With such well received books such as The Experience of Place and In Motion: The Experience of Travel, Tony has a impressive history of being intrigued by humans interacting in the city, the countryside, and in the wilderness. And that includes new ways of planning and managing these immediate and often overlooked places.
All of this has made a perfect background to support Tony’s new quest to refine the entire Delmarva Peninsula by designating it by the federal government as a national reserve, very similar to the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve with its 1.1 million acres. Hiss believes that by re-identifying the region as such will lead to the kind of thoughtful planning seen with the Pinelands as it protects landscapes, manages growth and ecologically protects enageranged species from unnecessary extinction.
The Spy sat down with Tony in the White Swan Tavern’s living room to chat about what the Delmarva could really be in the future.
This video is approximately eight minutes in length
Craig Fuller says
Powerful and important interview! Ironically, I traveled to Stuart, Florida for a boating event this morning. As I made my way to the hotel, I looked at all of the development in this area and thought, I certainly am glad to be living in Talbot County on Trippe Creek! Upon checking into the hotel, I logged on to The Talbot Spy to catch-up on what’s happening only to have Tony Hiss explain to me just how fortunate I really am. THANKS!